Banff Film Festival plays to adventurous crowd

Australian adventurers James Castrission and Justin Jones won the Grand Prize at the 2012 Banff Mountain Film Festival for their cinematic chronicle “Crossing the Ice.” The two men covered 1,140 kilometers on their unassisted journey across Antarctica to the South Pole and back. The film is one of 13 that will be shown Saturday at the Smiley Building for the touring version of the adventure film festival.

Courtesy of James Castrission and Justin Jones

Australian adventurers James Castrission and Justin Jones won the Grand Prize at the 2012 Banff Mountain Film Festival for their cinematic chronicle “Crossing the Ice.” The two men covered 1,140 kilometers on their unassisted journey across Antarctica to the South Pole and back. The film is one of 13 that will be shown Saturday at the Smiley Building for the touring version of the adventure film festival.

If ever an event was tailored to an specific audience, it’s the Banff Mountain Film Festival and Durango.

An abbreviated “Best Of,” the festival, which is held every fall at the Canadian ski resort town, will return to Durango on Saturday. It is sponsored by and is a fundraiser for environmental groups San Juan Citizens Alliance and Rocky Mountain Wild.

The two-hour-plus program is a combination of short and feature-length films with an outdoor/adventure and environmental focus. Every year, the Banff Mountain Film Festival chooses 60 films from more than 300 submissions from around the world. For this customized screening, staff members at the San Juan Citizens Alliance and Rocky Mountain Wild chose an assortment of 13 films from the October 2012 festival:

The first half of the festival will feature these movies and will be about 70 minutes long:

San Juan Citizens Alliance works to protect water, air, lands and the character of our rural communities in the San Juan Basin. Rocky Mountain Wild works to protect, connect and restore the last great wild places in Colorado.

If you go

The Banff Mountain Film Festival will be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Smiley Building, 1309 East Third Ave. Total program length is 2 hours, 18 minutes.

Tickets cost $12 in advance, $15 at the door ($10/$12 for students). Tickets are available at Pine Needle Mountaineering, 835 Main Ave., and online at www.sanjuancitizens.org. For more information, call 259-3583.